Crocodile Tears

When I was a kid there was a nasty piece of work who, having left school the previous year, used to wait at the school gates at the end of the day and beat up anybody his younger brother nominated. The younger brother played the victim and earned a certain cachet but gained no friends. The solution came in numbers, as the nominees soon realised who their friends were and where their best interests lay. The Shad brothers moved on; Omi got sent to Borstal and nobody cared what happened to the weedy one, but it was an interesting observation in the exercise of power and alliance.

A threat is only meaningful if there is a very real chance of it being carried out. Parents learn the hard way that you have to come good on your sanctions or the power slips from your grasp into theirs. A lone bully with loose fists is an immediate danger but without allies – who are usually only joining in from fear for themselves – he will soon be outnumbered by the sheer weight of ordinary people who won’t stand for it. Occasionally you get a Cray, but more often you get pale imitations. It seems there just aren’t enough psychopaths to go around.

Politics has its fair share of psychos, but in the end they all fall. So people like French President Hollande trying to strong-arm the UK into a Brexit so light it’s like they signed up for punishment detail will only get so far. And besides, if you want to be the bully, be careful who you pick on to prove your mettle. Fifth columnists may have infiltrated our society but when push comes to shove we Brits have never taken kindly to Johnny Foreigner meddling in our affairs.

Weedy, friendless, LimpDem 'leader' Tim Farron seems to believe that we didn’t vote to leave the EU at all and demands a parliamentary vote on our position regarding the single market. This is like getting your big brothers to lie in wait at the school gate to mug those you don’t like. He thinks that a rigged vote will effectively reverse the outcome of the referendum and defy the wishes of the seventeen and a half million ‘ignorant racists’ who voted to leave. Well, guess what, Tim, those numbers aren’t afraid of you and your kind.

Think sad thoughts, Tim!

The remain lobby’s shrieks of pain and woe have yet to die down and still they are demanding to know the unknowable “But what does Brexit look like?” while stamping their little feet and balling up their tiny fists. Some of them are still so fraught they can produce tears at will, like an actress summoning up sad memories to provoke the appearance of emotion. But those crocodile tears are convincing nobody. What does Brexit look like? Well stop blubbing and let’s find out, shall we?